Mistress of Rome

  “Oh . . . I think you have an idea, Lord and God . . .” I slipped off my couch and sank to my knees before him, trailing a finger down his leg. “You’re hurt. Let me tend you, Lord and God.” I bound a napkin around his bleeding foot, then bent my head and kissed away the tendrils of blood about his ankle.

  He yanked me up and kissed me with his teeth. I nailed my body against his, thrills of excitement racing up and down my spine.

  “Yes,” he said decisively, pulling back. “Yes, you’ll do. Come here.”

  He took me in the middle of that bloody room.

  Twenty-eight

  THEA

  THE Praetorians left me in a muddy turnip field just outside the city walls. Perhaps I was too bloody and battered for their tastes, or perhaps they thought my bad fortune would infect them, or perhaps the freezing rain quenched their ardor, because they didn’t try the Emperor’s mistress for a ride of their own before leaving her in the mud. They just pushed me off the horse and galloped away. I huddled there, shivering in the waves of rain.

  All my nightmares were coming to pass. Every one.

  Vix. My boy.

  My fault. Should have gotten him away. Should have known he wasn’t safe.

  Vix.

  I pulled myself upright, stood swaying a moment. My stomach a mass of fire. Joints of my fingers grating like they’d been filled with hot sand. Blood trickling in half a dozen places, swiftly diluted by the rain.

  I’d been worse after Domitian’s bed-wrestling. At least my feet would still carry me.

  So I walked. Unsteadily, swaying across muddy fields. I walked until the rain passed and a watery pale sun rose, walked until it stood directly overhead in the restless clouds, walked until it fell again. Lay down in a ditch for a while. Picked myself up when the cold became unbearable and stumbled on. People averted their eyes. Thought me a madwoman.

  I didn’t wonder where I was going until I saw the roof of Flavia’s villa peaking against the orange sky just outside Tivoli.

  “He’s got a hut,” Vix had told me. “On Lady Flavia’s north vineyard.”

  I toiled across the vineyard, grape leaves brushing my face, thorns catching my ruined gown. Saw a hut on the hillside. Round, like the huts in Brigantia.

  After sixteen miles of trudging, I couldn’t walk the last sixteen feet. I crawled. Tapped on the bottom of the door.

  “Vix,” I said to the hard bare feet that answered my tap. “The Emperor’s got Vix.”

  SHE sat like a doll before the fire while Arius sponged the crusts of dirt and blood from her face. “He just took him,” she kept repeating. “Took him, and threw me out.”

  Arius could feel the rage banking but turned away from it. “Let’s see your hands.”

  Three broken fingers. He bandaged and splinted them, as he had so often watched the barracks doctor bandage and splint his own, and heard the rest of the story in bursts. Lady Flavia. In the frozen agony over his son, Arius felt a sliver of grief for the woman who had delivered him from the Colosseum. She’d be dead soon, maybe. Dead and gone, never again to sit in her sunny atrium embroidering a shawl, or sweep through the bowels of the Colosseum stealing children from death’s jaws. Lady Flavia, who had given him a hut of his own and teased him for mangling her grapes . . . Praetorians had already swept down on the villa, the morning before Thea had arrived, but they hadn’t investigated the far vineyards, and Arius hadn’t assigned any importance to the visit.

  “Ssshh,” he told Thea. “Sleep now.”

  “But Vix—”

  “We’ll get him back.” In his mind’s eye he saw Vix lunging at the Emperor, table knife in hand. Why had he ever taught the boy to fight?

  “I can’t sleep.” But her eyes were half-closed already as he carried her to the bed. As he laid her down, a flicker of pain crossed her face.

  “What?”

  “Nothing—my ribs—”

  He reached for the fastening of her gown.

  “No!” Her hands pushed feebly at his. “No, I’m just bruised—”

  He peeled away the crushed silk, feeling for breaks in the bones.

  What he found was a bruise. Greenish, days old, not new. Under the curve of her breast. How would she get a bruise there . . . and one so oddly shaped?

  His fingers found another. And another.

  He pulled back the rest of her gown.

  “Arius.” Thea’s voice was a whisper. “Don’t.”

  In the flicker of firelight, the bruises and the scars and the burn marks were all but invisible. Not to his hands, though. By touch he found them all.

  “Arius—”

  He looked at her. He didn’t know what expression was on his face, but she put her arm up as if to shield her eyes. The lines of the knife scars, he saw for the first time, now climbed nearly up to her elbow.

  He reached out to touch her face but stopped. Every muscle in her body had pulled into a quivering knot.

  He took his hand away. Tugged her gown around her again. “You’re right,” he said. “Just bruises.”

  She flinched as if he’d struck her. Her eyes were full of a sick self-loathing.

  “Sleep.” He rose, laid his cloak down along the opposite wall, and stretched himself out. “You keep the bed.”

  He saw the relief as she ducked her head away, huddling like a child. Although it was a long time before she slept.

  Arius didn’t sleep at all.

  Careful, big boy, Hercules told him. Don’t stir up any graves better left alone. But Hercules was the one rotting in a grave. Hercules was dead, and Stephanus the gardener would die with Lady Flavia.

  Arius the Barbarian was still alive.

  He unburied the demon, spade by patient spade of dark grave-earth. It unfolded itself, stretched, yawned from its long sleep. Then it settled down, and the two of them, Arius and his demon, planned with slow, burning pleasure exactly what they would do to the Emperor of Rome.

  ROME

  PAULINUS didn’t have much time for a warning, but he tried his best.

  “Look,” he growled at the bristly head that topped his shoulder. “I’m fond of your mother, and for her sake I’ll try to keep you alive. Keep your mouth shut, and give the Emperor whatever he wants.”

  “Yeah.” The marble hall was cold, but sweat stood out along the boy’s forehead.

  “What possessed you?” Paulinus couldn’t help asking. “Trying to stab the Emperor?”

  “Dunno.” Vix shrugged, chinking the chains between his wrists and ankles. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean, maybe now it doesn’t seem like such a great decision, but—”

  The guards swept a door open before them and Paulinus pushed Vix into the black triclinium. The black-robed Emperor lounged on black velvet cushions on an ebony couch, his eyes as pitch-dark as the walls. The only splash of white was the bandage that swathed his foot. For once there were no servants, no slaves, no secretaries. “Stay,” the Emperor said to Paulinus, eyes never moving from the boy, and Paulinus tried to melt against the wall.

  “Sit, boy.”

  Vix sat, on a black silk cushion at the foot of the Emperor’s couch.

  “Your new room is comfortable, I hope.”

  Vix stared.

  “Have you a tongue, boy? I haven’t cut it out yet. Later, perhaps.” Stare.

  “If you won’t talk, then pass me the decanter. Don’t bother searching the table for weapons; I had everything sharp removed.”

  After a pause, Vix shoved the wine over in its ebony decanter. The wine was a ruby stream of color in the blackness.

  “Wine dulls the ache in this foot of mine.” The Emperor regarded the bandaged limb with faint surprise. “The surgeon says it will heal quickly.”

  Vix shrugged. “Can I have some wine?”

  Domitian passed his own goblet over, expressionless. Vix ostentatiously wiped the onyx rim with his sleeve, drank deep, passed it back.

  “So.” The Emperor settled back into the black cushions. “What shall I d
o with you?”

  “You could let me walk out,” Vix suggested.

  “No . . . I don’t think so.”

  “Worth a try.”

  “Correct.”

  They contemplated each other.

  “All black, huh?” Vix looked around the black triclinium—chinking his wrist chains together, Paulinus noticed, to hide the fact his hands were trembling. “Scary.”

  “I haven’t decided yet what to do with you, Vercingetorix,” the Emperor mused. “I could throw you to the lions in the arena. Or perhaps I’ll have you gelded. How would you like to sing as prettily as your mother?”

  “I’m tone-deaf.”

  “A man of the sword, then. Like your father, perhaps. Who was he?”

  “Dunno.” Clink clink clink.

  “Liar,” Domitian said pleasantly. “We’ll have to work on that.”

  “Oh boy. Can’t wait.” Clink clink clink.

  “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?” Clink clink clink.

  “That sound. It annoys me. A god’s ears are acute.”

  “Well, we’ve all got problems.” Clink clink clink.

  “Stop that!”

  “Okay.”

  Clink.

  They stared at each other. Paulinus opened his mouth, then closed it. He’d stepped often enough between brawling men in the Praetorian barracks, but this was one duel he didn’t dare interrupt.

  “You’re going to kill me,” said Vix to the Emperor. “Aren’t you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see, nothing. I’ve heard the stories. Gods squish mortals like ants.”

  “You believe me a god, then?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Another smile. “You sure bleed like a mortal, Caesar.”

  Domitian’s eyes dropped to his bandaged foot again. “You stabbed me.” There was something like wonder in his voice. “Fourteen years I’ve reigned on this throne, and not once have I been harmed. Until now.”

  “First time for everything.”

  “Not for me. I am Lord and God.”

  “Sure.”

  Silence.

  “You know your mother is probably dead? I had my Praetorians dump her outside the city. If she hasn’t been robbed or murdered by now, then she’s no doubt sleeping in a ditch somewhere. Easy enough to find, if I so decide.”

  Vix looked at him.

  “I could pick her up tomorrow, if I liked. Bring her back. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Vix leaned forward so suddenly that Paulinus’s hand leaped to his dagger. “Leave her alone,” the boy said to the Emperor.

  “Why should I?” Avuncular.

  “Let’s make a deal. Leave her alone, keep me.”

  “Arrogant boy. Leave you alive to plant more knives in my back?”

  “It’ll sure make things interesting.”

  You crazy boy, Paulinus thought in distant, terrified admiration. Maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought.

  Domitian tilted his head at Thea’s son, considering. “Are you afraid of me?”

  Vix looked at him as if he were a moron. “One word from you and the pretty boy over there turns me into a twitching pile of blood and guts on the floor. Of course I’m afraid. I’m shitting myself.”

  Domitian looked at him.

  “You’re too proud to strike a bargain with a slave?” Vix taunted. Sweat beaded all along his forehead. “You balding freak?”

  A long, barbed pause. Paulinus winced. No one teased the Emperor about his thinning hair. The last man who had . . .

  “Why, no,” the Emperor of Rome said, meditative. “I don’t believe I’m too proud to strike a bargain with a slave, Vercingetorix.”

  Vix stuck his hand out. Incredibly, the Emperor took it. Palm against palm, flesh against flesh. Bones bending, knuckles whitening. Seeing who would flinch.

  They looked into each other’s eyes. Neither flinched.

  “Well.” Domitian smiled, genial. “I suspect I shall enjoy this. Your mother was a great challenge, but I think you’re going to be an even greater one, Vercingetorix—or is it Vix?”

  “Only Mother calls me Vix.”

  “I could very easily have been your father, you know. Were you a few years younger, I would wonder . . . but no.”

  “There’s a God after all,” Vix muttered, and finally Paulinus could drag him out.

  “Are you crazy?” he hissed under his breath. “Talking to the Emperor like that—even worse than trying to stab him in the first place!”

  “Mother said he plays games with people,” Vix said. “I thought it might work.”

  He twitched away from Paulinus, fidgeting with his tunic, and Paulinus saw a wet patch on the white linen. The boy had pissed himself.

  “You laughing at me?” Vix said fiercely. “You laugh at me, I’ll beat your face in! Pretty boy palace soldier, you think you’re tough—” His hands shook as he shoved Paulinus’s chest.

  “No,” sighed Paulinus. “I’m not laughing at you.” He led Vix back to his quarters.

  THE Imperial court buzzed after that. Paulinus heard the whispers.

  “I hear the boy has his own room right next to the Imperial suite—”

  “The Emperor took him to the Senate hearings yesterday—”

  “To the opening of the new aqueduct—in full public view—”

  “You know what the people thought of that!”

  “Really, though, they must be wrong. If it was Emperor Nero, now, or Galba, then they’d be right, but Domitian’s never been a boy-fancier.”

  “Every man’s entitled to a change in midlife. He did get rid of Athena—”

  “Athena may be gone, but now he’s mounting that pretty little Pollia weasel.”

  “Anyway, the child’s a prisoner. Wears that bright red tunic so he’ll be easily spotted if he tries to run away. Can’t go a step without tripping over Praetorians. Though maybe it’s the Emperor’s protection they’re looking after . . .”

  “You mean the rumors about the boy trying to kill him at dinner? We all know the Emperor didn’t get his foot broken by a horse, even if that’s what the doctors say—”

  “Nonsense. Domitian would have had the brat’s head knocked off on the spot—”

  “Not if he’s the Emperor’s bastard son.”

  “Can’t be. You can always tell a Flavian: the high color, the nose. Big stocky lad like that; he’s pure peasant stock—”

  “Athena’s?”

  “No, then he’d have kept her, too. The boy’s a by-blow on some other mistress, mark my words—some slave woman, probably—”

  “Slave or no, he’s the Emperor’s new favorite. Time to start bowing to the boy in red, wouldn’t you say?”

  THE Emperor’s cousin Flavius Clemens and his elder son were executed on the Gemonian Stairs, sometimes known as the Stairs of Sighs. Two days later, it was Flavia Domitilla’s turn to be escorted from her cell. The official charge was impiety.

  Marcus watched her from the crowd, on foot with the rest of the plebs, fury surging impotently in his gut. He’d spoken as strongly in the Senate as he dared, and none would support him. All he could do now was watch Lady Flavia go to her death in the same gown she had donned for the banquet where her sons should have been confirmed heirs. One of those sons was dead now. No one knew whether the younger son lived or died. “The elder boy is old enough to be ambitious,” Domitian had shrugged. “The younger—I haven’t yet made up my mind.” No one dared ask. The more lighthearted courtiers took bets on whether the boy had already been exiled, or whether he had been strangled in his cell. Certainly the Emperor had not bothered, today, to watch his niece go to her execution.

  The crowd was very silent as Lady Flavia made her last procession. No one dared shout in protest, but she was popular. She had done her duty by producing sons and heirs; she gave generously to beggars and children; she might be a Christian but she always bowed to the proper gods. Now she walked blank-eyed and bloodstained down a few la
st moments of life. Her son, if he was still alive, would surely not long survive her. The last Flavian branches to be pruned from the tree.

  “Halt.”

  Marcus turned his eyes sharply at the voice. A figure in white, half-hidden by the red and gold solidarity of the Imperial guards.

  “Remove yourself,” the Praetorian snapped. “We escort Flavia Domitilla to her execution.”

  “What is her charge?” The voice was female, low, unhurried. Lady Flavia stood patiently, an ox waiting for the sacrificial ax.

  “Impiety. Now remove yourself from the road, Lady.”

  “I am the Vestal Justina. In Vesta’s name I pronounce her innocent of the charge laid upon her. By my authority as a priestess I lift the sentence of death levied upon her.”

  The crowd began to whisper.

  Flavia opened her eyes.

  “Oh, no,” said Marcus quietly.

  The Praetorian paused. Cleared his throat. “We—we can’t—”

  “Do you disobey the laws of Vesta?” With every word the Vestal’s voice grew stronger, carried farther.

  “No, but—but the Emperor—”

  “In this matter the Emperor is powerless. My goddess has extended the hand of mercy to this prisoner. Execute her and you risk divine retribution.”

  The Praetorian groped. “We’ll—we’ll have to take you before the Emperor, Lady. We can’t—”

  “Do so. I am sure that before all the people of Rome, he will not fail to obey Rome’s most ancient laws.” The Vestal stepped between a pair of guards, her veiled head dwarfed between their armored shoulders. Lady Flavia was staring at her now, muddled eyes clearing. Marcus heard her voice very clearly, as the Praetorians reversed their path and bundled the two women back through the buzzing crowd toward the Domus Augustana.

  “Why—what—why did you—?”

  “Vesta told me to save you,” the Vestal said calmly.

  “But I don’t believe in her—I’m a fish-painting Christian, I don’t believe in her—”

  “That doesn’t matter. She still wants you alive.”

  “But—” They passed out of Marcus’s hearing, but he could still see the horror dawning in Flavia’s eyes as she stared at her savior. The same horror rose in his own gut because he knew that voice—knew it very well. “Her death for yours,” Marcus said aloud. “He’ll have it no other way.”